Wednesday, November 19, 2008

After a (too) long wait, evdev 2.1 is finally out. This release should bring evdev up to speed and provide those features that the mouse driver had, but were previously missing from evdev. Get it while it's fresh.

One of the important things here (especially if you're a distributor): evdev 2.1 does not call EVIOCGRAB on the device anymore. Either patch it in again, or update your server to one that doesn't require it (1.5.3 will do).

Here's a short list of new features that have been added since 2.0:- axis inversion- touchscreen support (those that don't report BTN_LEFT)- run-time calibration for absolute devices- axis swapping- mouse wheel emulation- drag lock

Also included is property support for run-time configuration. We don't have a released server that provides this option yet, but it'll be good for a test-bed until 1.6 comes out.The properties also caused the long wait for the release, I wanted to wait until the server API had settled down. The next release will be sooner. The proposed release date for X server 1.6 is Jan 5 2009. Evdev 2.2 will be released by Jan 5 2009 as well.